Cooling our planet?

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July 17, 2012 |
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We’re failing to reduce the emissions contributing to global warming.
So why not try something more direct, say geoengineers. Let’s cool the earth by shooting sulphur particles into the atmosphere to imitate the shading effect of a volcanic explosion. Bold or bonkers?

Volta Magazine on the rapidly growing debate on geoengineering

Dumping iron into the oceans to stimulate the plankton blooms which absorb CO2? Sucking CO2 from the air with huge contraptions? Painting roofs and pavements white to cool our planet by increasing its reflectivity? Geoengineering technologies sounded outlandish to Jeff Goodell, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone and The New York Times Magazine. But after several years of researching the characters, ideas and motivations of a small band of geoengineers, he came to realize that we have to start taking geoengineering seriously. Or at least explore it.

In How to Cool the Earth, Goodell’s scary but compelling book about some more extreme approaches to tackling global warming, he investigates the scientific, political, financial and moral aspects of geoengineering. How are we going to change the temperature of entire regions if we can’t even predict next week’s weather? What about wars waged with climate control as the primary weapon?

The thing that Goodell – who is certainly no geoengineering groupie – fears most is that we won’t do anything at all. “The rising interest in geoengineering is driven less by mad scientists than by spineless politicians”, he writes. The villains are politicians who dither and do nothing to reduce our emissions, until a technological fix may be all that saves us.

But geoengineering is going mainstream, according to the ETC Group in Geopiracy – the Case against Geoengineering, and policymakers are beginning to test the waters. “It is now politically correct to talk about geoengineering as a legitimate response to climate change”, they wryly conclude. The ETC Group has called for a moratorium not just on geoengineering, but all technology: “A wider global mechanism for Technology Assessment is long overdue.”

This summer, the United States Government Accountability Office published a technology assessment report on climate engineering. The agency evaluated two broad categories of engineering solutions: carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management. It also tested potential public responses. GAO concluded that current technologies are ‘immature’, and many have ‘potentially negative consequences’. Based on GAO’s survey, a majority of US adults are not familiar with climate engineering: “When given information on the technologies, they tend to be open to research but concerned about safety.”

Claudio Caviezel from the German TA office TAB, described the pros and cons along the axes of 'hope, hype and fear' in their BRIEF magazine. Obligatory reading, for spineless politicians and civilians alike.

Read more

How to Cool the Planet – Geoengineering and the audacious quest to fix Earth’s Climate
Jeff Goodell, Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, Boston / New York (2010)

Geopiracy – The Case against Geoengineering
ETC (Action group on erosion, technology and concentration) Group (2010)

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volTA magazine

volTA was a magazine on Science, Technology and Society in Europe, initiative of fifteen technology assessment organisations that worked together in the European PACITA project aimed at increasing the capacity and enhancing the institutional foundation for knowledge-based policy-making on issues involving science, technology and innovation. It was published between 2011 and 2015 in 8 numbers.